


Breathless

by emynii, ObliObla



Series: Nia & Obli's Bad Things Happen Bingo [1]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Dissociation, Gen, Immobility, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Panic Attacks, Post s04e03: O Ye of Little Faith Father, Self-Hatred, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:52:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24123904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emynii/pseuds/emynii, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObliObla/pseuds/ObliObla
Summary: Move, you bloody bastard.But he can’t.
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Series: Nia & Obli's Bad Things Happen Bingo [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1740652
Comments: 23
Kudos: 145
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	Breathless

**Author's Note:**

> First fill for our [Bad Things Happen Bingo card.](https://obliobla.tumblr.com/post/617590261904769024/here-is-your-card-for-bad-things-happen-bingo)
> 
> Prompt: Rendered mute

His chest rises and falls.

_Get up._

His shoe squeaks against the marble as he tenses his leg, but he stays seated, slouched gracelessly on Italian leather.

_Just stand up._

The bass beat of Lux’s music thrums under his feet. He blinks, staring at a spot on the balcony. His vision clouds into streaks of light and shadow. He blinks again, and it resolves. He cannot tear his gaze away. 

_Move, you bloody bastard._

But he can’t. He sat here five minutes ago, ten? He sat and put his shoes on. He sat to contemplate his sorry lot and wallow in some choice self-pity before heading downstairs into the usual Saturday night rush. To lose himself in something he doesn’t have to think about—the noise, the color, the energy.

The slight stink of old Chinese takeout drifts into his awareness, and his nose wrinkles. He tries to get up again, but he cannot move.

 _How dare you?_ he tells his body, indignant. How dare it not do what he requests? It’s his, isn’t it?

Isn’t it?

His back aches—not from the position, of course, though it is unfortunate. No, it aches because of all his little failings. Because of Cain. Because of what the detective _saw._

_What I saw was my partner._

Lies, all of it. Or maybe a cruel, bitter truth. Like the gall he fed to that bastard before his own life collapsed around his ravaged, flayed shoulders. He tenses his thighs, tries to rise again. He only slumps further into the couch.

_Dad dammit._

Perhaps something simpler. Perhaps he could try something simpler. He attempts to look down at his own lap, something that might ground him before his thoughts get away from him as they so often do these days. He cannot force his eyes to move. He can blink, that is all, and he cannot do that by choice. He focuses instead on his hand, resting against his knee, warm in the summer evening’s air but for the cold of the ring on his finger. His fingertips tremble. He can feel them like they’re someone else’s, more than his own. But they don’t budge.

 _You worthless, goddamned angel,_ his mind shouts. It’s a common enough refrain.

Being cruel to the detective when he means to be kind.

_You worthless, goddamned angel._

The disappointed look on his erstwhile family’s faces when he messes everything up yet again.

_You worthless, goddamned angel._

Their fear when his anger gets the better of him—and when doesn’t it, really?

_You worthless, goddamned angel._

_Is_ he even an angel anymore? He’s too much a coward to manifest his wings—aching, smoldering under his skin. Does he even want to be? What _does_ he want to be?

As always, no one answers but the echoing numbness in his mind. Desire is his purpose, and his punishment is never knowing his own. He grits his teeth—a win, if slight—and tries to stand again. Nothing.

_Adamant chains couldn’t keep you down. You’ve been beaten, burned, cast out, hurled headlong flaming, and you can’t best your own mind?_

His jaw goes slack, and he loses even that victory. This might be the worst cage he could find himself in. The bars are invisible, and he can never quite reach the lock. 

The elevator dings. Hope, for a cruel moment, rises in his chest before being brought low by disappointment. And shame. Always shame, these days. 

_”Oh,”_ a party girl says, seeing the state of the penthouse, the state of its occupant. Pizza boxes are stacked on the piano. Razor blades and white powder feature on the coffee table. The bar is empty, without purpose. His hair is unstyled, his suit unpressed, his body curled in an uncomfortable position.

Hell, but he’d like to be high right now. At least that disconnect from his body is _pleasant._

“A-are you busy?” party girl asks. He should have gotten a lock for when he wants to be alone. But there’s such weakness in that, and some part of him enjoys this mortification. Let them see how far the Devil can fall, as if he had any power over his descent. As if he didn’t. And he _doesn’t_ want to be alone. Not with himself, at least.

She takes a few unsteady steps into the penthouse and asks, “Hey, are you okay?”

 _Never better,_ he thinks but does not say. A lie. 

_I’ll be fine._ Something he wishes he could believe.

“I...” But even his blandest reassurance refuses to pass his lips. His mouth works for a moment, trying for more, for better, but he loses the thread of action again and cannot speak.

“I’m just...gonna go,” she says, awkward. Her heels thud against the marble. The elevator dings as it shuts. He can’t make himself ask her to stay. He doesn’t even want to.

 _“Hrrr,”_ he vocalizes into the again empty room. It’s pathetic. _He’s_ pathetic. But no amount of denigration will force his limbs to cooperate. He’s tried. Repeatedly.

 _Worthless_ drifts through his mind looking for something to connect to.

He sighs, well, exhales noisily. The barest touch of control he can wrest from all his impotence.

His eyes water, which is odd. Impossible, really. But when has that mattered. He blinks, then blinks again, then tries to close his eyes entirely, to find some solace in the darkness behind his eyelids. It’s denied him.

_Fuck._

The longer this goes on, he knows, the worse the agitation becomes. The more potent the shame afterward. He tries to clench his hand into a fist, dredges up every mote of rage and spite and pettiness he has within him—and they number like the stars too—but, still, he cannot make his body move.

He lowers his expectations— _ha, never done that before_ —and tries to twitch a finger. Nothing. A toe. Nothing. Lick his lips. Nope. Nada. Bloody _zilch._

This is dangerous. In Hell, unmoving for so long, an attack is likely to come, or else the landscape itself might begin to swallow him whole. In Heaven, angels sit motionless for ages, but he never did manage it. He never had the patience for meditation. For devotion. For _prayer._ There were always more purposes to fulfill, more siblings to annoy, more places to explore. Until there weren’t.

And look where that got him.

He tries to make his eyes burn red, thinking again of Cain, but then he thinks of Chloe, eyes wide and filled with tears—

_Could you accept me like this?_

_I don’t know._

—and the flames sputter out and die. He tries to manifest his devil face, but it’s trapped within him, as it was before he left Cain on the ground with a knife in his chest. He even, panicking slightly, though, of course, still perfectly still, tries to manifest his wings. They were bloody and mangled last time they saw the air, aching and burning purer than hellfire. Right now the pain would be welcome. It’s so much better than all this numbness.

But still, nothing.

He’s losing the thread of his thoughts, now, too filled with restlessness he can’t escape. He blinks, blinks again, breaths coming faster through his nose. His chest flutters shakily. 

_Get up._

His shoe squeaks. 

_Just stand up._

He claws at the inside of his skin, wishing for agony but finding only emptiness. He fights with all the fierceness he learned in Hell, with all the fervor he was taught in Heaven. He slumps to the side, cheek coming to rest against cold leather. 

His phone sits inches from his face, amid the detritus of broken pleasure and crumbs of misspent joy. He could call Linda. Do this properly. Talk it out. Make things _better._ He could, but he can’t. He won’t. He doesn’t want to. Sometimes desolation is easier. They’re bosom buddies, aren’t they, he and despair.

Growing shadowed talons, he tears and rends at the phantom of his own flesh, relishing the effort, even if it’s futile. He imagines blood pouring down bones and exposed musculature. He sees scars, like those of his devil face, twisting and crawling on the inside. He wishes they were real. He wishes it all was real, not some trick of self-actualization.

If it was real, he’d understand why it hurts so much. 

Were he human, he’d be hyperventilating. Were he human, the rush of blood through his veins would be too fast, the rapid beating of his heart too wild. Were he human, mortal, _vulnerable,_ he’d have a heart attack or it would stop. Either way, it would be over. 

But he is not human, and so it continues.

Minutes pass, or seconds. Or hours. The stench of slowly rotting food pervades his senses, but he can’t raise a hand to cover his face. The thrumming of the bass beat rattles in his legs, but he can’t pull his feet from the ground. Everything is too bright, too colorful, too _much,_ but he can’t close his eyes. Nothing is grounding, now, not even pain.

He vocalizes again, this ragged, raw, pathetic sound the only thing he’s allowed. It’s not dissimilar to the wrenching howl of one whose throat is constantly burning and healing, resolving and melting into less than dew. But this lake is of torpor not fire; these torments come only from the inside.

Slowly, slowly, _slowly..._

_But he cannot make it_

_But his mind is_

_He can’t stop it from_

_But it_ hurts

...his breaths come steadier. His heart rate slows. He tries to twitch his finger, and he succeeds, though it feels like wading through lava, its heaviness invading his lungs, its heat and agony comforting in their familiarity. 

He blinks, then blinks again. The patch of leather near his mouth is cold and clammy. He licks his lips. He twitches his toes. He sits up, then stands, then stalks to the elevator, all in a rush, fast enough to maybe trick his brain. To maybe not fall into the spell again. That is always a danger, and he can only swallow so much of his own weakness, slick down his throat like gall.

He steps into the elevator, hits the button for Lux, flattens his hair down. He wipes his mouth, smoothes down his vest, straightens his cufflinks. He taps his ring with a fingertip, feeling the coldness there. He squares his shoulders, mouth carved into a grin. He will have a good night, he _will_ lose himself to desire, or at least to the music and the booze and the drugs. He will return to the penthouse in the early hours of the morning to sleep, to wake, to do it all over again. 

And he’s fine, truly. There are no scars lurking beneath his skin. He is not bleeding somewhere no one else can see. When he wades amongst a sea of revelers, they will not _know._ There is no sign remaining of his weakness, or his fear, or his pain.

Would it be better if there were?

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Breathless](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26479546) by [GoLBPodfics (GodOfLaundryBaskets)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GodOfLaundryBaskets/pseuds/GoLBPodfics)




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